5.5. Oral language skills

Oral language interventions are based on the idea that comprehension and reading skills benefit from explicit discussion of either content or processes of learning, or both, oral language interventions aim to support learners’ use of vocabulary, articulation of ideas and spoken expression.

Oral language approaches might include:

• targeted reading aloud and book discussion with young children;
• explicitly extending pupils’ spoken vocabulary;
• the use of structured questioning to develop reading comprehension; and
• the use of purposeful, curriculum-focused, dialogue and interaction.

Oral language interventions have some similarity to approaches based on Metacognition (which make talk about learning explicit in classrooms), and to Collaborative learning approaches which promote pupils’ interaction in groups.

5.1.1.  Developing Listening Skills & Speaking Skills

Developing Listening Skills:

“Listening is arguably the most important skill used for obtaining comprehensible input in one’s first language and in any subsequent languages. It is a pervasive communicative event. We listen considerably more than we read, write or speak.” (LeLoup and Pontero, 2007)

In order to teach listening skills, teachers need to:

• Explicitly model how to be good listeners
• Show the children footage of what good listening looks like
• Schedule quiet, listening opportunities as part of the school day
• Provide spaces in the classroom that encourage conversation and attentivelistening, e.g. ‘The shop’, ‘The doctor’s surgery’
• Create organic learning charts to capture what good listening is

Developing Speaking Skills:

In order to teach effective speaking skills, teachers need to:

• explicitly model effective speaking in a formal and informal manner

provide opportunities for students to engage in conversational-style speaking e.g. using the shop area, providing scenario cards

• give students tasks that involve observing and recording effective speaking
• use role-playing to teach and reinforce good conversational skills
• carry out activities where the whole class read aloud
• teach the rules that govern social interaction as mentioned above
• create organic charts to capture the mannerisms associated with effective speaking such as the non-verbal behaviours mentioned above

5.1.2.  Activities to develop Listening Skills & Speaking Skills

1. Act It Out

This is a small group activity designed to give pupils time to decide what they would do in different situations. It provides them with the opportunity to discuss the information they need to include and to try to find ways of improving their speaking and listening.

• At the table pick a scenario card and discuss these questions, what is happening? How do we know? What will we say and do so that everybody knows what we mean? How can we say this so that it sounds like the talk we use in school? What will we do to show that we understand what is being said?
• You need to decide who will act out the part and where the action will start, before, during or after the event on the card.
• Try acting it out.
• Students can then reflect on these questions, what made sense and why? where else could we listen like this? Where else could we speak like this? What would we say differently next time and why?

2. People I Talk To, People I Listen To

This activity provides pupils with an opportunity to discuss the different purposes for speaking and listening. Teachers can draw on contexts inside and outside the classroom.

Use a variety of photographs or pictures of people that the pupils meet or interact with on a daily and weekly basis.

1. Choose a picture and discuss using the following questions, when do we talk to …? What do we talk about with…? How do we speak when we talk to…?
2. Repeat with other pictures emphasizing choices that are made according to topics that may be discussed or the purpose of the speaking.

Students need to understand and know how the range of oral language texts will operate in different contexts. Therefore, as teachers we need to establish classroom structures and procedures that allow students to develop their understandings of the different forms that oral language texts take, as well as providing opportunities for pupils to purposefully practice these forms in a variety of settings.

It is important when addressing the different types of language to give consideration to:

• The range of different social contexts of language (formal or informal, familiar or unfamiliar)
• The range of cultural contexts for language (local, community, institutional)
• The possible participants in a conversation and the relationship between them (the people who are known, unknown, students, peers, adults)